Megyn Kelly may be “smart” -- but is her television show?
Written by Jamison Foser
Published
Apparently it's “Megyn Kelly Is Smart” week at the Washington Post Co.
Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz writes today: “Having profiled Megyn Kelly awhile back, I can tell you that the lawyer-turned-journalist is smart.” He then quoted Troy Patterson's recent Slate profile of Kelly, in which he praised her for having “a former lawyer's precision with language.” (Slate is owned by the Washington Post company.)
Now, I've never met Megyn Kelly. But the odds are pretty good that she is smart. Maybe she even makes Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates look like morons. But ... well, there's this:
Fox's Kelly repeats discredited falsehood about stimulus funds for “abandoned train station”
Fox's Kelly minimizes Alito's link to “conservative alumni group” -- but Alito didn't
Sessions contradicts Megyn Kelly's claim that Sotomayor needs a GOP vote to get out of committee
Kelly claimed Alito's wife was “crying hysterically after Ted Kennedy made her cry”
Fox News' Kelly mocked ACORN for accurate statement about Florida registration law
Fox News' Kelly asked whether Michelle Obama gave “her critics fodder” with word she didn't say
Granted, anchoring a live television show isn't easy. Anybody doing such a job is going to make some mistakes. Those blunders don't prove that Kelly isn't as smart as Kurtz and Patterson say. (And they might not even be blunders -- they might be intentional dishonesty.) But it's more than a little strange that these reporters are so quick to praise Kelly's intelligence and precision with language without ever assessing whether her on-air performance reflects that intelligence and precision. Or what it says about Kelly --and Fox -- that such a smart person would make such false claims.